1) Yes, it is possible to set bandwidth limits, both averaged over a week, and hard per second limits. There may be bugs, but if there are, we will fix them. 22 hours a day is near enough permanent.
2) "If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise, we do not believe in it at all" - Noam Chomsky. If you don't know him, look him up... and the First Amendment. Pedophiles used the postal system before they used the internet; is that sufficient grounds to have all mail read by state censors? If your answer is yes, you probably shouldn't use freenet. Additionally, many child porn distributors rely on what amount to conventional publishing (credit-card subscription web sites, magazines etc) to distribute their filth _and make money from it_. This model is not possible on freenet, because data is redistributed anonymously (i.e. they can't track who is using their site, they can only post the stuff). Hence we undermine them just as much as other businesses who depend on preventing redistribution of their (data) product. There is no material of use to terrorists on freenet (as far as I can tell - we have no way of proving this by the very nature of freenet) that is not available on either the public, censorable web, or your local library (the material on Thought Crime about making bombs, for example). Freenet could be used by terrorists to coordinate an attack, just like the email system could be; but the email system is far less conspicuous (it is hard to conceal the fact that you are running a node), more reliable and faster for that purpose. But even if freenet had good anonymous mail support, the only way to prevent terrorists from using it for this purpose would be to read everyone's email... and any self-respecting terrorist would obfuscate their messages enough that it would not produce any useful information. Again, if you think the state should read everyone's email in case a terrorist makes a dumb mistake, then you probably shouldn't use freenet. Statement of bias: see signature. I work for the Freenet Project. I do not regard this as prostitution of my ideals or beliefs. I do not support terrorism, or pedophilia. I do not support trolling either (it's not on the same order of magnitude as the others), so if you want to talk about freenet-related ethics/politics, keep it to private email, or our general high-traffic low-signal mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 06:12:13PM +0200, Catalin wrote: > Hello, > I want to become a new member of the freenet mainly because I want to > help ensuring the freedom. > I have 2 problems/questions(one technical and one ethical): > 1) > I can give to freenet up to 5 GB of hard space. But I don't have enough > bandwith to share and I NEED my bandwith. I have a non-stop internet > connection with the speed/bandwith ranging from 0 to 8KB/sec , usualy is > somewhere betwen 4 and 5 KBytes/sec (a 128Kbits/sec cable connection > shared with other 8 people). > Also, my system is online only 22Hours every day so about 2 hours it > will not be online. No problem. > I am also afraid that using a permanent node freenet will "eat" all my > bandwith and I will not have enough bandwith left for other > aplications/activities (like downloads)... > Can I limit the maximum bandwith for freenet? (for example give it a > maximum of 2Kbytes/sec) (I use windows xp). See above. No problem, really. > What should I do? Use a permanent or a temporary node? Permanent. > 2) > Like I said before, I promote freedom, but activities like child > pornography and terorism DESTROY freedom... Talking about terrorism and child abuse does not in itself destroy freedom. Acting out your fantasies, or paying somebody else to do it (freenet is difficult to impossible to run "secure" pay-for porn sites on), destroys somebody's freedom. > I informed some organizations against child abusing and/or terorism > about the freenet project but I don't think they can do anything because > since 2000 when the freenet begun to work they would done something if > they could. What would you recommend they did? > I don't want to put my computer in the hands of terorists and pedophiles... > I tryed freenet and I saw links on the main index page (the index page > that has a link in the gateway) and in there i found links to freenet You mean The Freedom Engine? I would point out that we do not run that site. > sites that promote child pornography and terorist activities. If freenet > developers put a link on the gateway to material that is AGAINST > freedom, then on which side are they? > I ask freenet developers to remove those links and, even if they cant > stop such things unleast TRY to fight against it. You cant stop > terorists and pedophiles to acces freenet but you can make their life > harder by not ofering links to their sites and donating a procent from > the donations that go to the freenet project to some non-profit > organizations that fight against such things. Also, maybe you cand find Most of the money donated to the freenet project goes to yours truly at the moment. I donate a portion of it (over 10%) to charity (Tear Fund, at the moment; preventing the exploitation of children is one part of their work). > a techincall solution to prevent them using this network. The goals of freenet are anonymity for publishers and readers of data, to not rely on central points of failure, and to not allow censorship of data (it is distributed, or dropped, purely according to demand). There are justifications for these goals on the website; they are non-negotiable. If we allow the state to censor whom it pleases, it will not stop at pedophiles and terrorists. > What do the freenet developers do against such illegal activities? We do not commit illegal activities. We are not obliged to fight those who do. I have no idea whether there is illegal material in my datastore (btw, I haven't seen any illegal terrorist material on freenet, except for the odd manifesto, which would probably be legal under US law). And it would be fairly difficult to find out, and if I did try, I would never be able to identify everything, because the only way to decrypt it is to know the URI. > I have a posible solution: let every member see what is stored in his > node and let him delete everything that he doesn't like. This will not This will compromize our goals. Freenet is designed so that controversial but popular material (the Watergate tapes, the latest Eminem CD, or some porn site) will be distributed across many nodes, and any individual node runner will not be held responsible for having it because he does not know what it is. If node runners were responsible for what is in their datastores, either a) you could get anyone arrested just by inserting an illegal file on their node, or b) all file insertions would have to be vetted by the user before becoming available to the world. This would seriously harm freenet, and is in any case totally impractical. If you don't believe me, please read the architecture papers, and bear in mind that I wrote the datastore. > harm freenet, will not harm anonymity and freedom of speech, will only This is not true. On any count. > make some informations travel harder on the internet. This way you ill > have 3 categories of nodes: permanent nodes, temporary nodes and > permanent nodes that are almost like permanents nodes but by alowing > users to "clean" some informations will hrlp "clean" freenet. You might > say what if users clean the Z informations which is not ilegal and I Many nodes have 10,000 or so documents in their datastores, and handle dozens or more new documents per hour. Freenet routing works in such a way that anonymity comes mainly from the ambiguity as to whether the node asking for the document made the request, or forwarded the request for another node. If we sacrifice anonymity, and store everything in plaintext, and find a completely different routing algorithm, and give up any hope of decentralization (routing won't work if datastores only contain that which the local user inserts), then we could do as you say... but then it would no longer be freenet. Read the architecture papers, and this will become clear. > want to promot the Z ideas..well that Z informations will still be > stored in your node and in the nodes of other people that also like the > Z ideas so freedom of speech ill not be harmed, only that some > informations will travele fasters and some slower and the speed of > traveling of this informations will be decided democratically by the > users of freenet. As I have pointed out, freenet works by nodes serving requests for other nodes. Data is cached. Data which is inserted by a user is cached on many nodes. Even if we throw out the encryption so that users can read the files passing through their nodes, we would still have to make all permanent node runners examine every file that is cached in their node, BEFORE it gets stored. For a distributed file store (not a regular P2P), this is unreasonable. > If you are against illegal activities I think that you will make this > change on freenet. If not, then it means that you promote illegal > activities like pedophilia and terorism... Um, no. We do not promote pedophilia, or terrorism, any more than the postal system or the email system do. > > I hope that freenet will become what it is intened to be ( a "free > software designed to ensure true freedom of communication over the > Internet") and I hope that my participations in this network will help It is. See "freedom of speech". > you achieve this goal and stop pedophiles and terorists and other crimes > to take place in the shadow of freenet. Don't get delusions of grandeur. > > Catalin > > PS: Please escuse my bad English.... > PS(2): Please don't forget to answer my first question....:) > -- Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet/Coldstore open source hacker. Employed full time by Freenet Project Inc. from 11/9/02 to 11/1/03 Answering part (2) was not charged to company time :) http://freenetproject.org/
msg02455/pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
